Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) HD Graphics

The Intel Graphics Media Accelerator HD Graphics, Intel HD Graphics, or GMA HD (or GMA5700MHD) is an onboard / shared memory graphics card for laptops that is bundled in the package of the new Arrandale dual core CPUs (upcoming in Q1 2010). Depending on the CPU model, the GMA HD is clocked between 166 and 500 MHz (with Turbo Boost max. 500-766 MHz). Compared, the the CPU die, the GPU and memory controller are produced in 45nm and not 32nm.

The performance of the new Graphics Media Accelerator HD graphics card is noticable better than the old GMA 4500MHD (due to the increased number of shaders and in some cases also clock rate). In some games, the GMA HD is even as fast as a GeForce 9400M / ION chipset. On average it should be as fast as the HD 3200 / 4200 by ATI and therefore allow the user to play older and less demanding games in low settings. The driver support is still not as good as for Nvidia and AMD graphics cards. Furthermore, Low Voltage and Ultra Low Voltage Core CPUs contain lower clocked GMA HD graphics and are therefore slower.

Furthermore, the OpenGL performance is still not very good. E.g. the old Doom 3 and Quake 4 games wont run fluently.

Similar to the 4500MHD, the GMA HD also offers hardware accelerated HD video functions in the chip. The DXVA Checker lists support for MPEG2 (VLD, IDCT, MoComp, A, C), H264 (VLD, MoComp, IDCT), WMV9 (MoComp, IDCT), and VC1 (MoComp, IDCT) in 72x480, 1280x720 and 1920x1080. A Toshiba Tecra A11 laptop with Core i5-430M CPU decoded Big Buck Bunny (1080p, H.264) using the Windows Media Player using the graphics card with only 0-1% CPU load. When using the VLC which did not support using the graphic card, the CPU load was significantly higher with 8-17% in our tests. The same was noticed with WMV videos (The Magic of Flight 1080p 3-5% versus 7-12%) and VC-1 videos (Elephant's Dream 1080p 5-8% versus 8-15%).

The Turbo Boost function of the new Arrandale CPUs also allows the automatic overclocking of the GPU core. The graphics card is only overclocked if the CPU is not fully loaded and the TDP is not fully used.

High End: Core i5 520M, 540M, i7 620M: 500-766 MHz

Low End: Core i3 330M, 350M: 500-677 MHz

Low Voltage: Core i7 620LM, 640LM: 266-566 MHz

Ultra Low Voltage: Core i5-520UM, i5-620UM, 640UM: 166-500 MHz

It is questionable if the Turbo is really often used in current games, as most games also use a lot of CPU time. Therefore, the UM and LM versions of the GMA HD should be a lot slower because of the slow base speed of 166 / 266 MHz.

Manufacturer

Intel

Graphics Media Accelerator Series

Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) HD Graphics

12 @ 500 MHz

Codename

GMA HD

Architecture

Arrandale

Pipelines

12 - unified

Core Speed *

500 MHz

Shared Memory

yesShared Memory

DirectX

DirectX 10, Shader 4.0

Power Consumption

35 Watt

technology

45 nm

Date of Announcement

10.01.2010

* The specified clock rates are only guidelines for the manufacturer and can be altered by them.

- Range of benchmark values for this graphics card - Average benchmark values for this graphics card

Game Benchmarks

The following benchmarks stem from our benchmarks of review laptops. The performance depends on the used graphics memory, clock rate, processor, system settings, drivers, and operating systems. So the results don't have to be representative for all laptops with this GPU. For detailled information on the benchmark results, click on the fps number.